I was looking at the downloads of papers from Annals in the last year. In the top ten of most downloaded paper was one from 1997 (almost before downloads were invented!). It was on the Brazilian cerrado vegetation - http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstrac... A paper long before its time, but now the threats to the diversity of this ecosystem are becoming recognized widely.
The Brazilian Cerrado Vegetation and Threats to its Biodiversity
J. A. RATTER, J. F. RIBEIROŒ and S. BRIDGEWATER Annals of Botany 80: 223±230, 1997
also located at http://ecologia.ib.usp.br/ecovegetal/leituras/Cer...